They Seek Him There...

Stop panicking everyone, the wandering Wyndham has been located! He's in the tearoom, over here, no doubt serving up cake and the finest wines known to humanity.

Hurrah!

Unpalatable Truths

In retrospect, getting pregnant within three minutes of arriving in Cornwall was perhaps a little on the hasty side, as it's come to my attention that lumbering pregnant women are all but useless at renovating stinky old houses.

So for example, I can get on to the floor to unscrew floorboards, which is helpful, but then I can't get up again, which isn't.

I can cut up old carpet with a Stanley knife, but only for about ten minutes, after which I have to whinge extensively about how much my back hurts.

I can walk to the shop to buy milk, but only at 0.0007 miles per hour, meaning that by the time I return, the milk has gone off in the relentless summer sun (curse you, relentless summer sun!).

I can carry stuff from the car into the house, as long as the stuff is made of paper or cotton wool or balloons, and not from wood or metal or china or anything remotely useful.

I can pull up weeds in the garden, but only until I see worms, at which point I have to squeal 'ewww, worms!' and run away - oh wait, that one has nothing to do with being pregnant and everything to do with being a namby-pamby ex-city-dweller.

There's one skill that hasn't deserted me due to my enormous bulk, though. I'm still very good at nagging. Nagging - or the repetition of unpalatable truths, as I prefer to think of it - barely hurts my back at all. And what's more, because I'm female and can multi-task, I find that I'm quite capable of nagging expertly at the same time as standing around cradling a cup of tea and a Digestive biscuit. While Mr BC scales ladders, paints ceilings, shifts mammoth wardrobe pediments from room to room, and heaves great boxes of flatpack garden furniture hither and thither.

All of it wrongly, of course.

Tea And Antipathy

INT. PATROCLUS'S OFFICE - DAY

I am in the office kitchen, looking in the tea cupboard.

INNER VOICE: Hmm...Chai...Lapsang Souchong...Goji Berry and Arrowroot...where's the Earl Grey?

Seconds later:

INNER VOICE: There's no Earl Grey. Why the FUCK is there no Earl Grey?

Seconds later:

INNER VOICE: I specifically asked the office manager to get Earl Grey. Honestly, you can't get the staff...wait, what's this?

(It is a new packet of Earl Grey teabags, recently purchased by deeply efficient office manager)

INNER VOICE: These are Whittards teabags! I specifically asked the office manager to get Twinings! I *only* like Twinings! I told her that! Whittards Earl Grey is too strong! Also, Whittards isn't a proper tea company, it's only a pretend tea company, which sells over-perfumed girly doll tea in an attempt to lend a more upmarket air to its frankly pedestrian china. And they turned me down for a job once. Bastards. Although actually that might have been Cargo Homeshop. But still. This is going to upset my entire afternoon!

INNER VOICE: Patroclus, do you ever consider that you lack a sense of perspective?

INNER VOICE: (meekly) Yes.

I make a cup of Whittards Earl Grey, in my special Alan Turing 'magic' mug. It doesn't taste too bad.

Punk

INT. QUINQUIREME TOWERS - DAY

ME: Ooh look, Tim Footman called me 'the Poly Styrene of the blogosphere'. I'm so punk rock.

MR BC: You *are* punk rock.

There is a pause, during which I sip Earl Grey tea and look at the Habitat catalogue.

MR BC: Of course, she went mad, you know.

ME: Yes, well, I went mad too, but then I took drugs and got better.

Up The Twitter, Part 2

Having been befriended in the night by Norse blog-goddess Annie Rhiannon, I have started thinking about Twitter again.

Naturally I can't just muck about on Twitter like everyone else, oh no. I have to understand what's so important about it.

I have to develop a Theory.

Is it fragmenting our linear sense of time, by showing what hundreds of different people are doing at the same moment? Is it shattering our sense of direction and meaning and purpose into kaleidoscopic shards of inconsequential thoughts and actions? Is it like blogging for ADHD sufferers? Can anyone communicate anything meaningful in 140 characters or fewer? If so, will it give rise to any new literary formats? Is it just a bunch of self-regarding old arse?

Your views would be much appreciated. In the meantime I am going to have a nice cup of tea.


UPDATE: I'm now feeling very smug, because just a few hours and ten comments later, and thanks in no small part to the contributions of Valerie and Sean, I reckon I've finally understood what Twitter is all about!

Basically it all harks back to what Sherry Turkle was saying in this article from the New Scientist in September last year - that people are becoming so used to having a social network on the internet that their feelings and experiences no longer seem real to them unless they share them online. So essentially people like typing what they're thinking or doing into Twitter because it makes it seem more real.

I suppose it is a sort of new version of taking a photograph, or capturing something on video.

Anyway, that theory makes a lot of sense to me, because most of the people on Twitter don't seem like idiots, but rather they seem to be very webby, connected people who are used to being online all the time. Bingo.

Thanks to everyone who suggested things in the comments - you have no idea how happy it has made me to be able to solve a problem with the help of disembodied blog-friends in Reykjavik, London, Bristol, Bangkok and San Diego. Ahhh, it's enough to restore your faith in the internet, isn't it?

Dear lord, I think the isolation is getting to me.


Tags: twitter

Treading Water

I'm treading water on the blog rather, while several pivotal, crucial and unimaginably far-reaching aspects of my life click into place.

At least I hope they're going to click into place - they might shatter under the pressure and fly off in hundreds of different directions, like the retaining wall of a lego viking fortress when a cack-handed amateur (me) attempts to slot in the gate to the dragon's cage.

I was going to regale you in the meantime with a colourful tale from my past, probably the one about when I was manhandled by the police during an episode of mass civil disobedience on royal property (my relationship with QEII & co having been somewhat varied over the years), but then I started thinking about the weighty aspects of my life that are about to click into place (or not), and then I started thinking about lego, and then I thought I'd quite like a cup of mint and liquorice tea, and then...

*goes to make tea*

...but you know, by this time next week everything should have become clear, and I can stop wittering on in such a vague and annoying fashion. I hope.

Eaten Trifles

After a 25-year hiatus, I have now eaten trifle twice in the same week. I am wondering if this is a sign. Are we in for some kind of 70s party food revival? Will there be cheese footballs and sausages on sticks? Will it lead to joyless wife-swapping, Nana Mouskouri and oversized spectacles?

I have some pictorial evidence (not of joyless wife-swapping), but New Blogger isn't letting me upload photos just at present.

In foreign media news: I started giggling twice in the paper shop this morning; once at the title of a magazine I hadn't seen before, called Psycho Enfants, and once at French Elle Decoration's giddy declaration: 'On craque pour le style girly!'*

(Must buy floral teacups immediately.)

In music news: Chicago's finest unsigned twee electro-country band, Track a Tiger, have a new album. Possibly the only US indie band to link to Cricketing Dave from their website, Track a Tiger are generously giving away two tracks from the new opus, viz:


Track a Tiger - Saint About To Fall (mp3)

Track a Tiger - All These Accidents (mp3)


As ever, it isn't going to change your life, but it'll sound nice while you're potting geraniums, having a bath or sipping Lapsang Souchong from a floral teacup. Which, after all, are what Sundays are all about.


* The lovely Mr BC promptly translated 'on craque' as 'on crack', which made me laugh a lot.

Ask The Audience, Part 2

Despite my best efforts, nothing in the least bit interesting has happened* in the last few days, so I find myself at a loss for something to blog about.

I think I can get away with this once a year, and last year your suggestions kept me going for just about the whole of March. So I think it's time once more to ask you lovely people: what should I blog about next?


* To give you an idea, highlights of the past week include:

1. Slight mauling at hands (or rather, teeth) of large Rottweiler.

2. Re-installed last.fm.

3. Ate trifle for first time since 1982.

4. While strolling among the vines, acted out scene from World of Warcraft, which resulted in second slight mauling, this time by an Alsatian.

5. Got rash on face, not sure how. Possibly transferred by Rottweiler or Alsatian during episode of slight mauling.

6. Wrote a shopping list, went to supermarket. Omitted to take list out of back pocket during shopping trip. As a result, failed to purchase Twinings Earl Grey tea bags.

7. Drank a lot of Liptons Russian Earl Grey, which is horrid.

So as you can see, I need help.


UPDATE: Although I *did* listen to Loganoc's Saturday afternoon radio show, 'Twee as Fork', which was ace, as she played a nice song by Elliott Smith and that CSS song that I like.

Happy Christmas Blogchums!

No doubt I will be blogging right through the festive season*, like the trooper (read: no-life saddo) that I am, but I just wanted to wish a very happy Christmas and New Year to all of you lovely readers, fellow bloggers, commenters and lurkers.

It's been another odd year for me, and you've all been instrumental in cheering me up through the bad bits and making the good bits even better. Thanks to each and every one of you, and I hope you all have a lovely time, whatever you're doing and whoever you're doing it with!

I look forward to reading your comedy Christmas deconstructions and New Year's resolutions in due course. And to catching up with me London-based blogging chums when I'm back in the big city in January.

Patroclus xxx


Oo, look at that, kisses and everything. Has my mum spiked my tea?


* This was an optimistic prediction, made before my laptop succumbed to a festive virus, and I succumbed to a festive bout of unhappiness that prevents me from blogging. Normal service will be resumed at some point, though, I'm sure.

Blighty

After six long weeks in exile, I'm just about to make good my escape back to the land of Marmite and Twinings Earl Grey, to stock up on...er...Marmite and Twinings Earl Grey. And to check that the lovely Mr BC and I still like each other*. And to meet some people in Hungerford. And to pitch some dreadfully fashionable Web 2.0 malarky to some people in Reading. And to go to the work Christmas party. And to see Tunng and Viva Voce play in Brick Lane, if anyone fancies coming along on Monday evening.

My reward for all this frivolity is a 3.30am taxi back to Stansted on Wednesday morning, and the exile commences once more...


* Which apparently we do. Awww.